A single streak of green
by Ang Griffen
Summary: Ice, Guy, Fire. Resurrection and reflection. Set in an alternate timeline version of Green Lantern: Rebirth. Spoilers for the Judgement Day arc of JLA v2. Technically a one-shot, but I might write more in this universe later.


**A single streak of green**  
by Ang Griffen  
March 5, 2005 

Disclaimers: DC's, sucka.  
Spoilers: vague ones for various Justice League America v2 storylines  
Summary: Resurrection & reflection.

Archive: 4 Color Heroines. Everyone else ask first.

Author's Notes: Takes place during an AU version of _Green Lantern: Rebirth_

Thanks to LC and Jori for audiencing. Written for 4CH 2005.

_For Caia._

* * *

Fifteen minutes ago, Tora opened her eyes again for the first time in what could have been days or could have been decades. A flash of green—so familiar, but unplaceable—danced across the inside of her eyelids, and when she opened her eyes she was here: standing on a platform in the middle of a cavern. 

Ice sculptures of twirling, dancing figures lay scattered at her feet along with the crisp brown remains of what had once been flowers. Flowers— the soft, velvety petals warm-bodies left in remembrance. Tora crouched down on the slightly raised platform to touch the papery remains of the petals. Not a cavern, then, a _burial ground_.

She didn't remember being dead.

She didn't remember _dying_, for that matter.

It wasn't as though she'd had to dig herself out of a grave; maybe she'd merely blacked out while visiting her brother's grave. Her powers had been so _strange_ lately; these sorts of things should be expected, right?

Then again, she couldn't remember much at all. There was the nagging feeling in the back of her mind that there were so many things she _should_ know, and so little that was just— just barely out of her grasp. It was strange, she thought, as she sat on what seemed to be a pedestal for a statue that had since been taken down, she could still recite old poems she'd learned in her youth, but she couldn't place _times_ or _names_ or that haunting green that had flickered across her vision.

She rested her chin on her hand, and began wracking her brain for answers, for anything that would help her to map out her past— to map out her _identity_.

* * *

The early memories were, surprisingly, the easiest things to recall. Maybe it was because there just wasn't as much _there_. How much effort _should_ it take to remember her father's stern admonishments, her mother somehow both shrinking and regal at once; to remember burying herself in studies in the hopes she'd stop wanting to use her forbidden ice powers? It was an seemingly endless cycle alternating between ritual and dissatisfaction.

The brightness of being discovered by the men from the outside world, shone in her mind like nothing else previous. Tora wasn't sure she'd known how unhappy she really was until she'd had the opportunity for something _more_.

And then there were the Global Guardians, and there was— green.

There was Green Flame. Fire. Bea. It was... strange that they had become friends, and yet not strange at all. The others had said things about opposites attracting, which was some sort of adage of their people, and an unfamiliar one at that, but Bea— loud, flirtatious, aggressive Bea— wasn't _exactly_ her opposite. Just because Tora was quiet and retiring and Bea was, well, _Bea_ hardly meant they had nothing to talk about. Otherwise they never would have been friends.

And although Bea might have said things that shocked Tora, although she may have been a little over-the-top and in-your-face, there was certainly a part of Tora that had found being friends with someone like that _freeing_.

Even after the Guardians were disbanded, even when they were poor and out of work, even when there was a new team, with new people, Tora couldn't think of a time after they'd met that they _weren't_ friends. Sure, sometimes Bea entertained the wrong pursuits, just as Bea believed Tora did the same, but from the first flash in her mind of Bea's firey green breath so many years before, there had been _something_...

As Tora's thoughts narrowed to the second team, the Justice League, the memories grew more clouded. A businessman who made her nervous, a Martian, an escape artist, and _blue_, and _gold_, and— _green_.

His name eluded her, although the others' (Max, J'onn, Ted) came back. She could see him in her mind's eye, but it was as though through fogged glass. A shock of orange hair, and anger, and _will_. Bea had been unhappy with him. With... _them?_ And, in retrospect, Tora was unable blame her because she could remember how one day his green was gone, and soon replaced with yellow. She trembled at the thought now, although she did not know why the very concept made her shiver with sickly fear.

The rest was a blur: the greatest man on Earth perished, powers were gone, and the world shifted and changed, but Tora could not stop focusing on the moment that green turned—

Her powers had changed right before the last of her memories; she could fly and twist iron in her bare hands. And yet, if she was so strong, why was it when she grew closer to that last battle her brain fogged and she could not see what happened?

There had been a change.

There had been a list.

And then—

And then.

* * *

Tora shook herself from her reverie. It had helped somewhat, but mostly only raised more questions. _Had_ she been dead? Why had she returned? What should she do now? Were any of those she cared about still around?

As she pulled herself up to stand, she caught a glimpse of her own hand. Even in the dim light of the cavern her stomach flipped at the sight; something wasn't _right_. Her fingers, her entire body, translucent and shimmering.

Ice.

And when Tora laughed, it sounded like snow being crushed beneath boots.

Of course she hadn't had to climb out of her coffin, pry herself out of the vault. Why should she have? She wasn't in _her_ body; she was inside the figure of the ice sculpture that had once stood proudly over her own grave.

As Tora laughed in the voice that wasn't hers, the walls of the cavern trembled and shuddered around her, and it was only the sight of the green light (the yellow imperfection) shining into the cavern pulled her from an introspection nearing hysteria. She clenched her fists, ice cracking as she tightened her grip. If someone (something) had felt it so important to bring her back, it was the least she could do.

The walk to the entrance of the cavern was short, and the refraction of the shining lights in the night sky blurred and sparked at her vision. Instinctively, Tora raised a hand to shield her eyes from the light, but the sharp yellow shone easily through the smooth, clean ice there. When she breathed harsh, cool, ice over her fingers, they whitened, diluting the harsh (heart-beating, terrifying) yellow light.

Across the night sky, there was a patch of green, slowly encroaching on the ever-present yellow.

Tora— _Ice_, though still uncertain about so many things, knew exactly where she needed to be.


End file.
